The Busan APEC conference and its malcontents

(This is a piece that I am submitting to Tech Central Station.  In the unlikely event that they run it, I will yank this post.  In the meantime, enjoy.)

UPDATE:  TCS accepted the piece so I am deleting it on my blog.  To see what the commenters are talking about, go here.

Comments

[usinkorea]

Very good article.

I do have one slight critical comment.

I think the first sentence of your concluding paragraph ran over what you developed well through most of the article.

It seemed like the type of knee-jerk reactionary line that long time expats often make --- including myself (believe it or not) when talking to "outsiders" about Korea.

Specifically, what I mean is "you should remember that the people fighting police in Busan no more represent Korean public" at least partially confuses the development you made about Korean society being one of the biggest protest cultures in the world.

I agree completely that the rice farmers and hard core union protests who do the most violence are counter to the main thrust of basic acceptance of globalism I think you correctly say is the mainstay of Korean society.

But, the violence the readers of the article might catch in South Korea during the APEC meetings isn't outside the norm.

Various groups on the left, middle, and right in Korea get away with the violence more so than elsewhere, because it is generally accepted --- pushing opinion-and-action to the extreme --- even if the extreme opinions are not generally shared to that extent.

I thought you explained that well throughout the vast majority of the article.

I give it a big thumbs up.

I just thought that one sentence seemed to backtrack...

[Tharp]

I attended the protests in Busan on Friday. I was also at WTO in Seattle in '99.

As for Busan, the majority of protestors weren't students or radicals, but instead older rice farmers, people who legitimately are concerned for their livelihood. If the Korean market is opened up and flooded with cheap foreign rice, many local farmers will be priced out of business. So is it fair to say that That these protestors don't represent public opinion? And what of a public that is uninformed about the consenquences of neo-liberalism and so called "free trade?"

And those "anarchists" in Seattle weren't represenative of the American public, either, you claim. There were only a couple hundred of "anarchists" even at WTO. What made WTO a success were the 60 thousand union members - middle aged working people with families - who showed up that day to demand a say in their future. To write their opinion off is both condescending and ignorant.

[from korean]

My opnion is similar to the above.